More on Harvard’s Budget Cuts
Posted on May 13th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 17 Comments »
The Crimson reports that students are none too happy with the first round of cuts.
While administrators called the cuts “a grueling exercise for everyone” and “a shared pain” at the meetings, many students said they disproportionately affected student life and that the process of making cuts had not been transparent.
(Nice shot of college administrators strolling past an “Emergency” sign, by the way, Crimson folks.)
It is a little hard to see how these cuts are a shared pain. So far, at least, they’ve affected union workers, graduate students, and undergraduates. (I’m not counting a professorial salary freeze, because no one’s getting raises in this economy.) It’s hard not to get the impression that those who are making the cuts are taking care of themselves.
But then—this is only about one-third of the $220 million in total cuts needed. Which should be alarming: If they’re cutting hot food now, and they’ve got $143 million to go, what’s next?
17 Responses
5/13/2009 8:27 am
You’re right, there will be more cuts to come, and more painful too. This is not different than other ivy universities by the way, although most didn’t grow as much as Harvard so have less need to shrink. But you’ve said several times that the cuts aren’t yet shared pain. What are you looking for?
5/13/2009 10:46 am
Richard is correct. There are people who earn very modest salaries at Harvard, including teaching assistants. It is not reasonable that they bear the brunt of the cuts.
What would be reasonable would be for those in the top 20% of the distribution of income at Harvard to bear most of the cuts, as this will have a very modest impact on their standard of living. In contrast, firing someone in the bottom 20% of the distribution of income will make a very small difference in solving the budget deficit and might place a family at serious risk. An across the board salary freeze is not reasonable and beneath what we should expect of the premier University in this country.
This is the time for the fat cats to come forward and demonstrate that they have what it takes to lead.
5/13/2009 11:47 am
Here is an approach to solving the budget gap at Harvard.
1. Sort all Harvard salaries and focus on those in the top half -e.g. those agove the median.
2. For those on the top half, within job category -e.g. all tenured professor, all deans, all associate deans, etc.- again sort those incomes and calculate the median (the point that divides all incomes in that category in two equal halves) then make all those salaries in the top half to be equal to the median.
This approach would best reflect Rawls ideals of Justice, and it would demonstrate Harvard’s commitment to fairness at a time when this could have a very positive impact in the nation. It would also speak tones for those making this decision of how to solve the budget cuts as most of those deciding would agree to bring their incomes closer to their colleagues doing similar work.
This strikes me as a better solution than feeding the students cold meals and asking them to endure extreme temperatures in their rooms and classrooms in the winter.
5/13/2009 11:56 am
It’s an interesting idea, although I’d love to see what the top 20% of the income distribution brought you to in terms of salary. Any guesses out there? TAs aside, what you’re suggesting is cutting the salaries of faculty and possibly doctors in the health services in order to save the jobs of part-time library doorcheckers, part time security guards, etc. Leaving aside the likely easy employability elsewhere of top faculty, it seems like cutting at the core of educational mission/purpose to save jobs that are peripheral. Is the role of Harvard to just keep employing people?
5/13/2009 12:19 pm
If you fire part time security guards and door checkers who will do this work? faculty? are you suggesting that the mission of the institution would not be affected if those people did not perform their work?
Would the productivity of a Professor change if the annual income changed from $200,000 to $180,000, would the productivity of a Dean change if you shaved off 10% of their income? Would their standard of living change?
The role of Harvard is what it has always been. I am assuming that Harvard has employed the people that are necessary to carry out the University’s mission. So I am assuming no one is perfunctory.
5/13/2009 12:28 pm
The Chief Academic Officer at Harvard has an annual income of $549,683. Would much change bringing this closer to the median for senior administrators in the University?
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i25/25a00101.htm
The average salary of a Professor is $192,6. Would anything change bringing those above this figure exactly to that point?
http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/
It’s more than an interesting idea. It’s a different way to think about fairness in a declining economy than asking the people with less power and less income to be the ones subsidizing those at the top of Harvard’s food chain.
Wouldn’t this set a very valuable example for the nation as the economy spirals downward?
5/13/2009 12:36 pm
The average annual salary of a Professor at Harvard is over $192,000. Would anything change bringing all salaries above this level exactly to that figure?
The salary of the Chief Academic Officer is over $550,000. Would much change bringing it to $450,000?
Would much change shaving 10% off the highest paid administrators?
5/13/2009 11:12 pm
I want to separate two issues here:
1) 50/50 (aka Fairness) has a good point and, though the proposal is (sadly) unrealistic, it very nicely illustrates the point about the relatively vulnerable taking the brunt of the cuts.
2) The symbolism of these cuts is just awful and sends a message guaranteed to upset students (and, I think, alums). I referred to these in the last thread on this topic as “ketchup-is-a-vegetable” style cuts and part of what I wanted to convey there is two aspects of this similarly tabloid-ready “Harvard students forced to eat cold food” story: first, it’s just incredibly lame to cut these small corners when so few symbolic big-ticket items are being visibly targeted in any serious way (and slowing growth in Allston doesn’t count because it’s not cutting an existing program but halting a future one); second, it’s humiliating for Harvard to be penny-pinching in such symbolically miserly fashion. It’s like running into Scrooge McDuck buying Spam at Wal-Mart or something.
5/13/2009 11:25 pm
The $192,000 figure factors in HLS, HBS, HMS, various “stars”, University professors, and the like. The FAS median is much lower, especially in the Humanities.
5/13/2009 11:25 pm
Some folks may also find this to be of interest: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~harvardsfuture/w/index.php?title=Main_Page
5/14/2009 7:10 am
if, in fact, the median is much lower than the average, shouldn’t this be all the more reason to bring those above the median to the median? If there are gross inequities in how Harvard compensates some of the faculty for essentially equal work to that performed by other faculty, shouldn’t these inequities be corrected before forcing students to be exposed to inclement weather conditions and to eat extremely cold breakfasts? How does paying some faculty salaries that are way out of line with what most faculty earn relate to Harvard’s core mission?
It has been made public that Larry Summers commands a salary in excess of half a million dollars a year. But, does his contribution to Harvard’s mission DESERVE that salary?
5/14/2009 7:19 am
The board of overseers, alumni and students need to know whether a group of insiders at Harvard have been helping themselves at Harvard’s expense setting levels of compensation that are way out of line with the norm in the University. This is essential information at a time of crisis.
This is the type of inquiry that Wall Street never engaged in, until the recent debacle hit the fan. Let us hope Harvard does not follow in Wall Street footsteps.
Make salaries and all perks public information. No need to attach names to them, just be very transparent of what the range is for each job category. If there is nothing to fear this kind of transparency will make Harvard stronger. If there are imbalances that need to be corrected, better to do this now than to be forced to do it once people stop giving.
5/14/2009 11:42 am
Isn’t it interesting that all of the usual faculty contributors who have so much to say about other topics are staying out of this discussion. A little too close to home perhaps.
5/14/2009 2:53 pm
Busy grading, but I can attest that the first 11:25 a.m. from yesterday is quite accurate. Also that I enjoy teaching in summer school and extension school, but don’t do it simply for the enjoyment.
5/14/2009 2:55 pm
Onto another topic, have you ever thought of re-releasing Harvard Rules with a title that features Larry Summers? With some updating and editing, I think you’d have another bestseller in this climate.
5/14/2009 3:01 pm
We did that with the paperback….
http://www.amazon.com/Harvard-Rules-Lawrence-Powerful-University/dp/0060568550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242331168&sr=8-1
But it wasn’t updated, no—the publisher said updates generally don’t make enough difference in sales to justify the expense. Then again…publishers.
5/15/2009 8:43 am
I wonder if you re-tooled the book to include some of his latest moves since Harvard, re-titled the book featuring Summers’ name, etc. I don’t know if you could shop the idea to another publisher (I realize you might be stuck in a contract.)
It seems with the right PR you could make real money off that book, positioning yourself as a media expert on Summers’ career and choices, and providing an analysis about his current economic approach, etc. Not that anyone wants to start attacking the Obama administration (minus Limbaugh, Coulter and Co.), but I think the book might give you leverage for media interviews, articles, etc. to comment on how Summers’ is handling the economy. Just a thought…